Carella: Amid the wealth, much disparity

Updated 10:25 pm, Thursday, February 14, 2013

This week, the U.S. Census Bureau released a report showing that the Stamford-Bridgeport metro area has the highest concentration of high-income households in the country.

Almost 18 percent of households earned more than $191,469 a year between 2006 and 2011, census data shows.

That's a lot of money, even for the statistical area, Fairfield County, where the cost of living is among the nation's highest.

But people who live in Stamford will tell you that most households in the city don't earn nearly that much money. And they would be right, census data shows.

The Census Bureau used annual earnings of more than $191,469 because that amount puts a household in the top 5 percent of U.S. incomes. If you round the amount up to $200,000, census data paints a picture of how many Stamford households are in that elite group.

During that five-year period, 6,615 Stamford households earned $200,000 or more, the data shows. The total number of households in Stamford is 45,478, so about 14 percent are in the highest-earners group.

Darien and New Canaan, for two. Almost half the households in those towns earn $200,000 or more. About 40 percent of households in Westport and Wilton earn that much, and 35 percent of households in Greenwich.

Then there's Bridgeport, where only 1 percent of households earn $200,000 or more.

The city closest to Stamford's 14 percent is Norwalk, at 11 percent.

So the Census shows that Fairfield County is home to cities where annual incomes of $200,000 or more range from 1 percent of households to 50 percent of households.

The data shows a similar disparity within the borders of Stamford.

In the Census Bureau's income brackets, the largest number of households, 6,615, earn $200,000 or more a year.

And 17,628 Stamford households -- or 39 percent -- earn $100,000 a year or more.

But most Stamford households -- 27,850 of them, or 61 percent of the total -- earn less than $100,000 a year.

Worse, 14,332 Stamford households, or 31 percent, earn less than $50,000 a year.

That 31 percent is more than double the number of Stamford households in the $200,000-plus group, but you don't hear much about them.

An annual household income of less than $50,000 is tough for a family in Stamford, where the cost of housing consistently ranks at the nation's top. Gas costs more, food costs more, services cost more, energy costs more and taxes are higher than most other places in the United States.

It doesn't make much sense that the headlines about Fairfield County usually are about its wealth. Census figures show the county has its share of struggling people.

In Norwalk, for example, 12,027 households, or 33 percent of that city's total of 36,463 households, earn less than $50,000 a year.

It's much worse in Bridgeport, where 58 percent of the total number of 51,014 households earn less than $50,000 a year.

In Bridgeport, 13 percent of households earn less than $10,000 a year.

In Norwalk, 6 percent of households earn less than $10,000 a year.

And in Stamford, 2,081 households, or 4 percent, earn less than $10,000 a year.

Earlier this week Census Bureau economist Adam Bee told The Advocate it's "very rare" for one metro area to have a concentration of wealthy households as high as Fairfield County's 18 percent.

Suburbs of large cities, such as Stamford's relationship to New York, tend to have a higher concentration of wealth, Bee said. Such suburbs have an average of about 6 percent of households in the top 5 percent of income earners, he said, and Fairfield County is triple that.

The data does not consider cost of living.

But Census information is increasingly specific, said Robert Bernstein, public affairs specialist for the bureau. It used to be that much of the data was gathered every 10 years, but about a decade ago the bureau began conducting the American Community Survey, an annual questionnaire that goes out to 3 million households, a statistically large sample, Bernstein said.

The Census Bureau now compiles detailed yearly data for communities large and small.

"It allows places to learn all about themselves, every demographic aspect of themselves," Bernstein said.